James Joyce and the Politics of Desire

This title, first published in 1990, offers a feminist and psychoanalytic reassessment of the Joycean canon in the wake of Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva. The author centres her discussion of Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, Finnegans Wake, and Exiles around questions of desire and language and the politics of sexual difference.

Suzette Henke’s radical re-vision of Joyce’s work is a striking example of the crucial role feminist theory can play in contemporary evaluation of canonical texts. As such it will be welcomed by feminists and students of literature alike.